


this is what you get

by opensummer



Series: the companions handbook [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, rose is the doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4668473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Make of it what you will. Every universe gets the Doctor it deserves. Rose Tyler doesn't age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is what you get

**Author's Note:**

> Remix of Daphne Gottlieb’s fifteen ways to stay alive

1\. Demand answers the moment you realize you’re not aging. Demand answers when your hair comes in blonde without dye. Demand answers when at the annual alien invasion you die and come back, not a hair out of place. Demand answers until the Doctor (your third) gives them to you. Learn what Bad Wolf means. Don’t wish you hadn’t asked.

2\. Let your husband take his afternoon tea alone from the moment you realize you’re not aging. Don’t hover outside his door hoping to hear the sound of a TARDIS. Never ask if he went on an adventure without you. Do not be jealous. It’s not like you can be the other woman.

3\. Spend your time together wisely. Learn Venusian Aikido, how to build a sonic screwdriver, hold hands and run. Defend the Earth. In the hospital when the nurses look at you clinging to him and judge, don’t snap at them. Tell them you’re his granddaughter. When he dies of old age, bury him. Then leave your home planet on the first ride out you can catch.

4\. Don’t look back.

5\. Hunt down rumors of the Doctor. They are everywhere, as you expected. The Doctor is always a legend. Your first solid lead comes from a drunk Time Agent from the twenty-third century. He’ll tell about the Doctor saving a Venusian Princess in two weeks. Let your shirt slip lower and ask him to tell you more.

6\. Wait for this universe’s Doctor on Venus. Realize no one is coming when the kidnappers vault the palace walls next to your hiding spot. Save the Princess yourself. When she asks your name tell her you’re the Doctor.

7\. After the banquet in your honor realize what you’ve done. Run.

8\. Create yourself. Steal a vortex manipulator. Run. Save people, stop wars, watch worlds end and begin. Keep running. There is no way out. When you feel the humming of a TARDIS in your head and your bones stop running long enough to steal her. She doesn’t look like a police box until you step into her.

9\. Learn to speak Gallifreyan. Listen when the TARDIS sings you the story of the Time War. Grieve for a people you never knew. Weep for them. Spend the next four hundred years running and learn that people don’t always want to be saved, and invariably somebody dies. The Time Agencies people are idiots, if anyone asks to be called by a title you laugh in their face and when they throw you in the dungeon make certain to hold on to your bobby pins. Learn that the earliest picture of the Doctor was made on the equivalent of Earth’s sixth century of existence on Raxacoricofallapatorius and seek it out. The artist made you burn like the sun. Laugh.

10\. Take companions, clever aliens, to run with you. Hold their hands and babble at them. Disturb them with how inhuman you are. Wonder if inhuman is even the right word for what you are.

11\. The first time you let a civilization die run for the stars. Better a coward than a killer anyday. The first time you kill a civilization drink pan galactic gargle blasters until your hands feel numb. They ate worlds this civilization, the last remnant of the Time Wars. Your body count hits millions that week.

12\. When Captain Jack Harkness saunters up to you in a bar in the fifty-third century, on one of the worst days you’ve had, don’t bolt out the back door. Instead greet him with a _Captain Jack_ , all gentle innuendo. When he blinks taken aback and says, you didn’t say I’d already met you, laugh at him. Offer your hand and have him follow you home.

13\. When you ask, Jack says London, the blitz, a pretty blond on a blimp and where’s my mummy. _You already knew me then_ , he says. _We’re doing it nonlinearly_ , he says and you laugh and laugh until you’re sick to your stomach

14\. This is after the Game Station in Captain Jack’s personal timeline. Don’t ask.

15\. Set the date- early twenty-first century teatime. The TARDIS rematerializes with the grinding of gears and the sound of the universe. The first word you say to him is _run._

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be an actual story at some point but I didn’t have the patience. Might revisit when I get around to rewatching Doctor Who.


End file.
